Brass Ceiling

Billy Lee Tipton was a rosy-cheeked pianist and saxophonist from Kansas City. Busy in the lower levels of the jazz and entertainment world, described as a “classy” musician by players who worked with him, he never broke through to the top layer of visibility.

At least not until he died in Spokane, Wash., in 1989 at the age of 74. At that point, Tipton became an instant legend.

Because Billy Lee Tipton was actually Dorothy Tipton. From the age of 18, Tipton lived her life disguised as a man, marrying three times and adopting three children. This lifelong masquerade was based upon the belief that gender prejudices made it difficult if not impossible for a woman to achieve significant success in the jazz world.

And, despite the bizarre solution she chose, Tipton’s evaluation of the problem was accurate. Jazz, from the very beginning--and, in many ways, stretching into the present--has not been especially receptive to female instrumentalists.

On any given night in almost any jazz club, there will be virtually no female instrumentalists present. And, in the rare instances in which a woman horn player appears, it’s not surprising to hear someone in the audience mutter the classic phrase, “Plays pretty good for a girl.”

Despite the still-present negative holdovers from a chauvinist past, many female musicians believe that the ‘90s are beginning to see some real changes. But gender parity in the jazz world, or even in the world of professional musicians, is still a long way from reality. In a society where everything from the U.S. Supreme Court to professional basketball has opened up to women, the jazz world remains one of the most difficult arenas for women to find opportunities in which to excel.

“There’s a glass ceiling for women in jazz,” says Leslie Gourse, author of “Madame Jazz” (Oxford University Press, 1995). “Women jazz players have all the problems that men players do, in addition to being women. They are not the first persons who occur to someone to call for a job. The real opportunities--to be side persons in groups or, even less likely, to be leaders--are still in very short supply for women.”

Female players have been present in jazz almost from the beginning, but almost never as horn players. In the music’s first few decades, the piano was the only really acceptable instrument for female musicians. Lil Hardin played piano alongside Louis Armstrong (and eventually married him) in the King Oliver Band of the ‘20s, and Mary Lou Williams was a superb arranger-pianist with Andy Kirk’s swing band in the ‘30s.

Other pianists--such as Hazel Scott, Dorothy Donegan, Marian McPartland, Toshiko Akiyoshi and, among the younger artists, Eliane Elias, Geri Allen, Rachel Z, Renee Rosnes, Michele Rosewoman, Joanne Brackeen and Cecilia Coleman--have all revealed superior jazz talents. And arranger-composers like Akiyoshi, Carla Bley, Annette Peacock and Maria Schneider, among others, have brought originality and imagination to jazz composition.

In the early years of jazz, female horn players showed up--with very rare exceptions--only in all-female bands. The best known: the International Sweethearts of Swing, Ina Rae Hutton’s Orchestra and Phil Spitalny’s all-female orchestra. By the ‘40s and ‘50s, players such as vibist Margie Hyams (with George Shearing’s group), trombonist Melba Liston (who played with Gerald Wilson and Dizzy Gillespie), trumpeter Clora Bryant and saxophonist Vi Redd were beginning to make pioneer inroads into jazz.

But the glass ceiling of today was a virtual steel barrier then.

Most musicians made their living working in traveling big bands. Few bandleaders from the period chose to use female musicians, however. Attitudes toward women--and toward women mixing with men in the rough-and-tumble life on the road--were vastly different, so many of the women active in the early days of jazz turned to all-women ensembles or family bands.

Redd, 66, a saxophonist and singer who was around L.A.’s Central Avenue scene from the late ‘40s, and who toured with Earl Hines’ big band, well remembers the problems. The daughter of a drummer, she cites the importance of family connections for female artists, at the time, as well as the generally friendly musical interaction taking place between musicians in Central Avenue’s many clubs.

“But out on the road,” Redd says, “that was something different. In addition to all the other problems, I think one of the reasons the men didn’t like women horn players was because they didn’t like the idea of women standing up alongside them in a position of equality. It was OK if the women played piano, because then they were sitting down, you know, in a position of subservience, while the men were standing up to play their horns.”

The basic problems for today’s women in jazz are not all that different from the problems for men: too few venues in which to play; too many players competing for the same audiences and the same dollars; difficulties in getting recording contracts; an urgent need to expand the listener base into younger demographics.

But the problems are exacerbated for women, in part because they are competing in a business controlled by an entrenched male establishment.

“You don’t have women controlling the money in the record companies or in the booking business,” says Gourse. “You have women in the publicity field and managing artists. But not controlling the money. And, for female artists, that’s a problem.”

In the face of this, women are arriving in the jazz field in increasing numbers. Among those fighting the good fight are three Los Angeles-based women whose experiences have run the gamut of what it takes to succeed: keyboardist Patrice Rushen, saxophonist-bandleader Ann Patterson and bassist Nedra Wheeler.

Different in experience and levels of success, they are linked by the nonjudgmental support and unequivocal encouragement received from their families in their early years.

Rushen, 42, perhaps the best-known of the trio, has been highly visible since the ‘70s. Her extensive list of albums includes jazz outings, rhythm & blues and pop. She has been nominated for Grammys as both instrumentalist and singer, has worked effectively as a producer (for Sheena Easton, among others), is becoming increasingly active as a film and TV composer, and continues to be a mainstay in jazz groups such as the Meeting.

But Rushen recalls her amazement the first time she realized she was being treated differently, solely because she was a woman.

“It was fairly early in my career, when I was scheduled to do a session,” she says. “I walked into the studio, and I could feel people staring at me with the look of, ‘I wonder what she’s doing here?’ Then, when I sat down at the piano, it was like, ‘Oh, well, we can’t expect much.’ So I just played my part--not out to prove anything, just to make sure I played my part well. And that came as a surprise to people--that I could play my part competently.”

A child prodigy and a graduate of USC, Rushen was accustomed to support and acceptance from her musical peers.

“At Locke High School, where 80% of the musicians were male,” she recalls, “I knew young men who were respectful. At USC, I saw women who could play their tushes off, who were able to communicate, who were well-respected and who were heading departments. So when I got out in the professional world and started getting that stuff of ‘Hey, she really can play!’ it was a surprise to me that it was such a big deal.”

Thirtysomething Wheeler has emerged in the past few years as one of the Southland’s most admired young bassists, regardless of gender. Ironically, she chose the bass in junior high school when--after originally being drawn to the viola--she was teased mercilessly by the two young boys who made up the balance of the viola section. But she has never looked back.

“People tell me, ‘Girl, you play the bass?’ ” says Wheeler. “ ‘You play that big ol’ bullfrog thing?’ But I didn’t grow up in an environment where something like that was a big deal. My family knows our genealogy back to slavery, and I come from a very strong line of women and women entrepreneurs. So I never heard the line that ‘Women don’t do this or that.’ I wasn’t told that playing the bass was just for men.”

Wheeler, who has a Master of Fine Arts degree from CalArts and who has performed with, among others, Ella Fitzgerald, Branford Marsalis, Kenny Barron, Bob Dylan, Pat Benatar and Stevie Wonder, also points out another difference between male and female jazz artists.

“Did you ever consider,” she says, “how many male jazz musicians out there are being supported by women? They get up there and expound on the depths of their music, but they don’t tell you about the babe they have who goes to work every day, comes home and prepares dinner for honey, goes to the gig when she’s dead tired and takes care of all their business. There aren’t too many female jazz musicians who have someone like that around to take care of them.”

Many female players, notes Wheeler, are obliged to work day jobs to support their music. And the negative impact of such work can be considerable.

“I know what that’s like,” says Wheeler. “When a female musician has to have a day job to keep going, it’s easy to get the feeling that, ‘Man, I’m not the real thing at all. I have to work a day job all day. What kind of musician am I?’ ”

But Wheeler, a soft-spoken young woman, professes no anger over the still-tenuous aspects of life as a female jazz musician.

“No, I believe in remaining hopeful,” she says. “I tend to not want to focus on the fact that men might treat you badly or try to hold you back. Things are difficult enough already without getting into that kind of mind set.”

Wheeler’s hopeful attitude will play an important role in a presentation she will make with Rushen and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington on Sept. 12 at the Ahmanson Theatre. The trio of performers will kick off the first event in the association between the Thelonious Monk Institute and the Music Center. Described as an “Informance,” it will present Wheeler, Rushen and Carrington in a conversation/performance focusing upon women in music before an audience of more than 1,500 L.A.-area high school students.

Patterson, a slender, dark-haired woman who admits to being “over 35,” comes from a classical background, trained as a classical oboist, with three degrees in music. Having focused on saxophone and flute since she arrived in Los Angeles in the mid-’70s, she is one of the few women horn players to perform with some regularity in the studios and in the male-dominated world of weekend “casuals” (or one-nighters).

Patterson started the large all-female band Maiden Voyage in 1980 and has struggled to maintain it, despite problems with keeping a regular lineup of players, and the more familiar difficulty of finding places to work.

“It’s been even more difficult,” says Patterson, “because I won’t let the band work for less than union scale [which can range from $50 to $150 per musician, depending upon venue and hours]. And that tends to reduce the opportunities we have to play.”

Like Rushen, Patterson was encouraged and praised as a young artist, only to find when she entered the professional arena that support was often in short supply from her male professional colleagues.

“Back in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, it was just assumed that since I was a woman I couldn’t play jazz. With a guy it was--and is--different. Judgment is suspended until they actually demonstrate that they can’t play.”

Patterson recalls how hard it was to break into the area of “casual” gigs.

“It’s better now,” she says, “but for a while it seemed as though the only way you could get one of those gigs was if you were a fairly young, clean-cut-looking white guy.”

She remembers one leader who asked her what she would wear to a gig, insisting that she wear a gown. “Well, I didn’t have a gown,” she says, “so I told him to forget it. He finally said it would be OK if I showed up in a ‘dressy’ black outfit.”

On one of her first “casuals,” Patterson was working a Jewish wedding.

“I wasn’t in a great mood, and I was feeling pretty angry about the fact that I was having such a hard time getting hired because I was a woman. Then, at some point between numbers, this very old, Jewish grandfather type with a very thick accent came up to me and said, ‘Lady, you play better than two mens!’

“And I thought, ‘Well, it’s a pretty good thing, because that seems to be the only way that I can get a job around here.’ ”

It was really not until the late ‘80s that a newer, better-trained, more confident generation of female jazz players, including Wheeler, began to arrive.

“The women’s movement had a lot to do with it,” says author Gourse. “And Prince helped by hiring Sheila E. as a percussionist, as did Miles Davis, who had a female drummer, which probably had something to do with the fact that some of the early breakthrough players were drummers: Terri Lyne Carrington, Cindy Blackman.”

Veteran tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, widely viewed as one of the two or three best jazz artists on his instrument, led a group with an all-woman rhythm section a decade ago. The players were Renee Rosnes, piano; Marlene Rosenberg, bass; and Sylvia Cuenca, drums.

“I was searching for something different,” he recalls, “so I figured, ‘Why not try to put a band of ladies together?’ But almost right away it became less a band of ladies than it was a group of top-flight musicians. Each of those players could really play. The fact that they were women just evaporated, and we got right into the music.”

Henderson acknowledges that some musicians still take the attitude of “OK, let’s see what you can do” toward female players. “But once they hear that they can get the job done, most of that opposition disappears.”

Record companies still take a measured view of female jazz artists. Blue Note Records’ Tom Everett, for example, notes that his label has released albums by saxophonist Jane Bunett, pianists Eliane Elias, Renee Rosnes and Geri Allen, and singers Cassandra Wilson and Rachelle Ferrell.

Asked about the general absence of female jazz horn players, Everett simply notes that “it all relies on the music. As long as the music is what you want, then you go for it.”

Presumably, then, Blue Note has not yet found female horn players sufficiently adept to match the male artists on the label--which fails to explain why a first-rate ensemble such as Ann Patterson’s Maiden Voyage (with the excellent Stacey Rowles and Anne King on fluegelhorn and trumpet, and the veteran Betty O’Hara on vocals, trombone and baritone horn) has yet to have an album released, almost 18 years after the band was founded. Or why the New York-based female big band Diva (which includes such excellent players as saxophonists Carol Chaikin and Virginia Mayhew, and trumpeter Ingrid Jensen) can only be heard on the small Perfect Sound label.

Despite the record business’ relatively sluggish response, how does it look at the bottom line for the emergence of new, talented young female jazz artists? Are the developments of the ‘90s alluded to by Rushen and others actually going to impact the role of women in jazz and in the professional music world?

“I think so,” says Rushen, “because the perception of female musicians has changed. When I was coming up, I didn’t see or know of a lot of female musicians. They weren’t on TV, and I didn’t read about them in the paper. Today, you’re going to see them, go hear them play, buy their CDs.

“And the result is that when I go out and do seminars and workshops at colleges, all sorts of young women come up and say, ‘Yeah, I play the trumpet,’ or ‘I play the trombone.’ Or the saxophone or the drums. And, for those younger players, their attitude is that what they’re doing is not all that unusual.”

Drummer Hillary Jones, a veteran of Navy bands who has been working with guitarist Lee Ritenour’s group for the past year and a half, voices that attitude with an assertiveness that would have been unlikely--from a female jazz musician--even a decade ago.

“We shouldn’t even be having this conversation,” says Jones. “Because this is not about gender. It’s about how good you can play. Maybe I’m too aggressive about it, but I’m not interested in all-girl bands. We don’t have to do that anymore. And I don’t want to hear the stories about how hard it is, about how women were told they couldn’t play trumpet or the drums when they were young.

“Sure it’s been hard. It’s still hard. Sure there are a bunch of chauvinists out there. But if you’re a woman and you want to do it, you’ll find a way to do it, because it’s all really just about the music.”